The University of Louisville beat Duke Sunday to advance to the NCAA Final Four. But that's not the big story. Louisville sophomore Kevin Ware suffered a freak accident that resulted in a compound fracture of his tibia and fibula. The injury was shown on live TV, and it was frightening. The image above is the Louisville bench's reaction. The video is available on the internet, but you don't want to see it. A commenter on Fark asked those who've seen the video to rate it on a scale from one to Theismann. The response was that it was worse than Joe Theismann's 1985 football injury of the same kind. Louisville coach Rick Pitino shed tears and there are reports of fans throwing up. Ware underwent surgery to set the bones, and a steel rod was inserted in one of them. He is expected to recover completely. Meanwhile, a debate has sprung up about the ethics of showing the injury on video or even still images. You can learn about the incident and the controversy without watching the footage. Link

At least the first shot of the injury, the announcers didn't seem to even be aware it had happened...unless we're going to put live sports on a significant delay, I don't think there's a way to avoid ever showing injuries. It definitely took them a little while to notice something bad had happened...at least on my viewing, didn't seem to be until they saw the horrified reactions of players on the court and then figured it out. And the replays didn't seem overly excessive to me, more like they were also trying to determine what had occurred (note that after maybe 30-60 seconds, CBS didn't show any replays and specifically stated they would not be). So, I thought they dealt with that end of things (showing the actual injury) fairly well. I took more issue with the fact that they had a camera following him to the ambulance...once they left the court (which is very clearly a public area), I thought they should have given him some privacy/let medical workers do their job rather than shooting him as he was loaded into the ambulance and as it drove away. Not gruesome, obviously, but felt like more of an invasion to me.